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Foreclosures and default notices in San Diego County edged up in January, but are still hovering around post Great Recession lows.
Last month, lenders foreclosed on 149 properties in San Diego County and issued 490 default notices, which kick off the 90-day foreclosure process, real estate tracker DataQuick reported Tuesday.
While the overall trend is down, January’s default notices jumped 58 percent above January 2013’s tally of 310. They were also up from the 387 filed in December.
“That’s disconcerting and something to keep an eye on,” said Mark Goldman, a loan officer and real estate lecturer at San Diego State University. “It’s probably too early to blame it on something like Congress deciding not to extend unemployment benefits. If that were a factor, we’d see that coming up in the next 60 days.”
A year ago, default notices dropped from 878 in December 2012 to 310 in January 2013. They were back up to 551 in February.
Andrew LePage, analyst for DataQuick, said the reason for last year’s low number could have been due to the initiation of the Homeowner Bill of Rights, which mandated banks not file a default notice while a short sale or loan modification was in progress. That also could be why the January 2013 to January 2014 year-over-year change looks high.
In foreclosures, lenders repossessed 149 homes in January, up from 136 in December.
“That’s not a significant increase,” Goldman said. “They’re bouncing along at relatively low levels.”
January’s number was down 60 percent from January 2013’s 381 foreclosures.
Foreclosures and default notices have declined since they were in the thousands during the height of the recession. Now that values have recovered, many who couldn’t pay their mortgages are no longer underwater. That means they can sell their homes to avoid default. The median price in San Diego County in January was $405,000 DataQuick reported.
